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I have spoken of the popular arts, but they might all be summed up in that one word Architecture; they are all parts of that great whole, and the art of house-building begins it all: if we did not know how to dye or to weave; if we had neither gold, nor silver, nor silk; and no pigments to paint with, but half-a-dozen ochres and umbers, we might yet frame a worthy art that would lead to everything, if we had but timber, stone, and lime, and a few cutting tools to make these common things not only shelter us from wind and weather, but also express the thoughts and aspirations that stir in us.

For instance, the efforts of the philanthropist and working man together have succeeded in shortening hours of labor and increasing wages without, alas! increasing the speed or quality of the work done, especially in the trades which have to do with materials of construction, so that house-building has about doubled in cost within twenty-five years, largely due to cost of labor.

The natives are constantly on the look-out for the Tabori attack on Munikahila. We hear the Munikahila natives have been stealing from Goldie. 14th. Since our return we have been house-building, but are getting on very slowly. I fear we are six weeks too late for the Kupele district, and shall have to leave it for another season.

The shade trees they planted are now magnificent in their proportions, and along each side of the street there runs a stream of water of exquisite clearness. There is very little crowding in the way of house-building. Each house in the city is surrounded by a green lawn, a garden and an orchard, so that poverty and squalor of the slum type is practically unknown.

Accordingly, the day following that of the thunder shower, as soon as we had returned from the beach, after taking our regular morning swim, Arthur called a council, to deliberate and determine upon the matter of house-building.

The blue that had been so timid and so tentative overspread the sky; more robins came, and after them bluebirds and redbirds and Peterbirds, and the impudent screaming robber jay that is so beautiful and so bold, and flute-voiced vireos, and nuthatches, and the darling busybody wren fussing about her house-building in the corners of our piazzas.

Marrying for shelter is and should be no longer necessary; and as for the fear that this habit of bachelor quarters will be hard to break up and tend to delay marriage, it will all depend upon whether it comes from the merely animal layer of the brain or from the intellectual. This housing of the individual instead of the family has introduced an entirely new problem into house-building.

Let society once thoroughly understand that safe shelter is essential to its very life, that this safety is threatened, if not lost, by present habits, and, by quick money-making schemes in house-building, it will establish standards of living which shall not only be for the material welfare, but for the mental, moral, and spiritual progress of the race.

She would never suffer him to declare any advance impossible; yet she had to listen, when he explained that countless things she cried for were impracticable under existing circumstances. "You want to get to the goal without running the race, sweetheart," he told her once. "Before this and this can possibly happen, that and that must happen. House-building begins at the cellars, not the roof."

Then, again, most of the hands employed on the Company's works were new settlers, and, of course, knew nothing of chopping, house-building, or clearing land; and yet these men were paid just as much as if they had served a long apprenticeship in the country. If Mr. Galt's appointments had been judicious, there is no doubt, in my mind, that half the outlay would have produced greater results.